


Out of Reach

by OldboyJensen



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Burning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mild Gore, Nightmare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-09 23:25:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10424154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldboyJensen/pseuds/OldboyJensen
Summary: The night after the Crystal Kingdom debacle, Angus has a bad dream, and a certain umbrella decides to help intervene. Against the helper's wishes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Well we never do hear about Angus' parents or why he became a detective. And when you refer to someone as "giving you a home" it usually means you don't exactly have one.

 

             Angus McDonald didn’t fall asleep for a long time that Candlenights night. He had plopped into bed heavy with exhaustion expecting to doze of immediately. Who wouldn’t, after all that stress? And yet there he was hours later staring at the ceiling. He grumbled at himself and rolled over on to his tummy, puffing his cheeks out into his pillow.

               “Oh boy Angus, you just have to be such a busy brain don’t you?” the boy detective huffed, “The sirs got out all right, what does it matter if we… couldn’t really… help that much?”

               He rolled back onto his back. Still uncomfortable. Still running through the entire mission in his mind: hundreds of scenarios. Maybe Merle could have kept his arm, maybe they could have beat HodgePodge sooner maybe…

               There were flower boxes filled with white tulips and daffodils on either side of the door to the McDonald house. It was such a nice blue. Robin’s egg blue had always been mommy’s favorite. Angus smiled big and toothy as he knocked for politeness before opening the perpetually unlocked door.

               He did not step in though. Not right away. As always, he took a moment to close his eyes and breathe in the seaspray seasalt carried on the breeze. If Angus listened really well, he could even hear the rumbles of breaking waves from down by the beach. It was a good place. The best to get taffy and other sweets. Well, the town was in general. Mr. McDonald’s taffy, like most of his food goods, was… less than flavorful. But it had a good texture! The other boys and girls at school were always asking for some for their parents who wanted to seal leaks or fix broken pottery.

               It was good to be helpful

               And it was better to be home.

               “I’m home!” He called out with his usual cheery excitement, “And boy do I have so much to tell you. I was investigating a case on the Rockport Limited and I met these three adventurers and they, well they weren’t really nice to me but mostly it was goofs- oh but they’re really cool and they helped me solve a mystery…”

               Angus chattered on as his took off his boots and coat and placed them both neatly in the mudroom. Well, he placed the boots and hung the coat. If he had done it the other way it would just be silly. His parents listened quietly, he assumed, from the living room where they both sat reading on the couch. Something nervous expanded in the back of Angus’ throat, but he ignored it.

               “And then I was about halfway through Ms. Brian’s case to find her not-fake fiance when this really intimidating but really nice lady found me and asked if I’d like to do detective work for her agency and I thought… I thought…”

               Something was off. His couch wasn’t floral? No. It had been but then… but then.

               “So,” daddy McDonald that spoke without turning, “You’re doing detective work?”

               “I… well yes…”

               Was the living room always this small?

               “You’re solving all sorts of mysteries?” Mommy McDonald questioned in a hollow deadpan.

               “Well yeah. I mean, I’ve solved a bunch. I’ve solved a bunch of mysteries. I’m really good. I’m-“

               “The world’s greatest detective?”

               “You call yourself the world’s greatest detective don’t you, Angus?”

               “But how can that be Angus?”

               His parents’s head slowly turned with a horrible scraping and snapping. They turned as one as flames began to lick the boy detective’s feet. Everything was sulfur. Angus dropped to his knees.

               His parents’ faces began to shrivel and burn. Smoking flesh peeled from bone and flaked off to float in the ashy air. In unison they stood and crossed their arms over their chests, staring at their quaking son with dead, haughty eyes.

              “How can that be, Angus?”

              “You stupid, arrogant boy. How could you _possibly_ be the world’s greatest detective?”

               Laughter and the crackle of flames seared Angus’s ears as he sprang to his feet.

              “No! No no no no!”

           But he wasn’t fast enough. The floor fell away with Angus left on a tiny patch of house teetering over an infinite void of grey. Noting but the grey and the millions of flaming, hungering hands. These reached out and beckoned for the McDonalds. Angus could do nothing as his burning parents, like in a trance, fell backwards and away into the inferno.

           “NO! Please! Please I’m trying! I’m still trying! Please!”

            Not again.

            Not again!

        The words melted into a shrill, pleading cry. Angus lost his footing and began to plummet. He could see his mother. And she saw him. Her face reformed and flushed, and she unfolded her arms holding out to him. He smiled through his tears, swallowed his fear, and reached out to her. Closer, closer.

_Come here, Angus._

           He reached her and she enveloped him in her arms. Angus McDonald, boy detective, buried his face into her neck.

           And then Taako Taaco snapped out of meditation to find a tiny boy nestled and mumbling "I'm trying" over and over in his arms.

          “HUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!?”

          “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!?”

           Angus fell backwards off his bed, bumping his head a little. Taako shot back and away from him like an umbrella weilding rocket, flat against the wall. All pupil and ready to strike.

           It was a really awkward moment while they both took stock. They broke silence simultaneously.

               “Sir, why are you in my-“

               “Angus what in the fucking FUCK-”

               Another pause as Angus rubbed his head and got slowly to his feet. His dream was fading, but it left behind that familiar bitterness. With… something different?

               “Well, uh sir, I’m not exactly sure since… you’re kind of a little in my room? Um? I think I’m the one who should be concerned in this situation?”

               Taako blinked and opened his mouth to say something before frowning and looking around.

               “Well shit… you’re right. This is way too shitty to be my place… well Ango…uh… see you dog.”

               Taako took two steps before the umbrastaff turned to lead and he stumbled against the sudden weight.

               “Oh you can’t be serious.”

               His strength roll wasn’t high enough.

               “Welp… Okay bye have fun babysitting my umbrella, kid.”

               “Wait, sir!”

               Taako was out. Angus padded over to the umbrastaff and leaned toward it before remembering it had vored Jenkin’s wand right before his eyes and thinking better of that. Instead, he rummaged through his bedside drawer to find the leftover macaroons he had stashed away.

               Taako, meanwhile, stood leaning against the wall outside Angus’ door. Something fuzzy and out of reach was giving him a headache. Burning right behind the eyes. Pushing sweat out. Geez.

               “Ugh,” he wiped his face and bit the bullet, poking back into the kid’s room, “Okay you know what nevermind! I need that back.”

               Angus froze, sitting on his bed cross legged with chipmunk cheeks full of macaroon and red eyes spilling over.

               “Double ugh,” Taako muttered to himself already regretting the next four words out of his mouth, “So uh, bad night huh?”

              


End file.
